Page 412 of Kingdoms of Night

Gasping, she fell against the wooden cage. What was this feeling in her skin, her bones…?

Seigneur Brune and the rest of his force arrived, swords and daggers already cutting down elves. She pressed her face against the cage to watch Werian and many more fighting back. The sounds of screams and grunts turned her stomach as her vision blurred.

The heat inside her threatened to burn her to ash.

“Isa!” John’s voice carried through the noise of fighting, of swords drawn and shouts and the thud of bodies hitting the ground.

Her body felt as if it was breaking apart at the seams. “Viridi!” she called out as she pounded on the trap formed by tree roots.

A crackle and hiss of fire sounded, then a hole appeared in the wooden cage. Rhianne was using her wand to burn Isa a way out. Once the sparking orange and purple flames worked a sizable opening, she squeezed through and was free. The magical fire didn’t scorch her, thankfully.

Rhianne called out her name and pointed.

The dragon hovered above Isa, its scaled face shadowed by its flapping and injured wings.

Dragonfire rippled from its maw.

CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO

VIRIDI

Viridi’s sight was reduced to white and black, but the movement of any living thing was immediately apparent with the way his new eyes saw life. When something living spun or leapt or opened their mouth to shout, the gray and white shimmered a glittering black.

His ears reverberated with the voices of the trees.

End them all. Take it all. It is ours.

With an acrid taste on his tongue and the scent of rot in his nose, he ripped and tore and destroyed and beat down the dryad elves until they were fleeing. But others were here. Strangers. They smelled like the sea and like scents from another life.

He had seen someone who made him feel … different.

Dragging his new body in a half circle, he saw a cage of wood, a trap he had made but had already forgotten.

What was in there?

“Viridi?” a melodious female voice called out.

His heart hit his chest hard, and for a moment his vision cleared and he saw color once again; he felt himself once again.

“Isa?” Was that her name?

Another shouted the female’s name, another woman—a witch. She had burned his cage. Isa wriggled from the cage.

Destroy her. Remember the prophecy, the trees hissed.

A shadow darkened his view of Isa and he looked up to see fire raining down.

He didn’t think. The cold of pure terror washed away the jeweltrees’ voices and he lunged into the path of the flames.

The heat scorched him as he began to shift from his Thorned form back into a dryad elf. Pain lanced his sides and back. The dragon shrieked along with him and the heat abated as the view of Isa’s wide eyes turned to darkness.

CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE

ISA

Isa screamed as Viridi fell onto her, and they crashed into the remnants of the wooden cage. Dragonfire rippled around them and the invisible chain of the fated mate bond tightened sharply in her chest. Was this her end and his too? Pain crawled over her body even though Viridi blocked the flames. She tried to breathe, spots dancing at the edges of her vision.

The dragon shrieked, then the fire ceased. Cool air wafted around her, Viridi, and the broken roots and branches. Viridi’s skin faded to its original color and his lips were pink once more. He collapsed, hanging limply onto what was left of the cage.

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